by C. J. Sansom
I said, my voice breaking with emotion and fear, ‘If this is the end, know I have never had better friends than you and Barak.’
‘And I could have had no better teacher or friend. But hold fast, this may not yet be the finish.’
A little way up the line of chained gentlemen, Dale, who had reacted during the march to Dussindale by making a jest of it all, laughed. ‘A bear chained to a staff. Like us, really. What might that symbolize?’
His neighbour turned on him viciously. ‘It means we have been captured and humiliated, and are about to be killed, by a crew of peasant dogs that would have all men to be such common beasts as they. By God, if we escape with our lives – I am a magistrate – I will see them all hanged.’ He shouted out across the ditch at the landsknechts, ‘Help us, damn you! We are on your side, we’re prisoners!’
None of them reacted. ‘They’re foreign mercenaries,’ Dale said, impatiently. ‘I doubt they even understand English!’ He laughed again, but with a frantic edge now.
Four more horsemen rode through Warwick’s ranks, fully armoured with plumed helmets. One carried a white flag of truce. Two soldiers marched before them, carrying a broad wooden plank which they laid across the ditch. The riders made their way with difficulty up the earthen mound, then across the plank, between the stakes. They passed us without a look, and continued uphill to where Kett and the other leaders stood. Dale said hopefully, ‘Maybe they’re offering a pardon.’ But as they rode up alongside the rebel ranks, the chorus of boos and insults hurled at them told me what the result of that would be.
There was another wait while Kett and Warwick’s men held a parley. The last of Warwick’s troops were still riding up from Coslany gate, and I drew a sharp breath as I recognized two unmistakable blond heads among a body of men, armoured and with swords at their waists, surrounding their captain, a horseman. They were ordered into position near the front of the line.
I said, ‘I’m not sure, but I think that’s Southwell.’
Boleyn said in a dull voice, ‘And I would recognize my sons anywhere. I think that’s my steward Chawry with them. So that’s where he ended up.’
‘No Flowerdew, though,’ Nicholas said.
‘He’ll be back for the pickings afterwards,’ I answered bitterly.
Warwick’s emissaries rode back down the hill; the frowns on their faces and the fresh chorus of insults from the rebel army showed that whatever offer they had made had been rejected. I felt a new tension in the men beside me as they rode past us again, and back along the ranks of Warwick’s soldiers.
Then came the sudden boom of a cannon firing from the rebel gun platform. We did not see the cannonball but heard a whistling and saw the standard-bearer’s leg, and the shoulder of his horse, explode in a fountain of blood. Both dropped, instantly dead; the standard dropping to the dusty ground.
Behind us came a shout from the back, passed up the line, ‘To battle!’
With booms and crashes, both sides fired their artillery, the rebels’ superior height and quantity of cannon wreaking havoc among Warwick’s forces, men and horses screaming and falling, gunballs hitting the ground and bouncing into the men. More orders were shouted from behind us, and a hail of arrows whistled through the air, over us, and fell among Warwick’s men, bringing more terrible screams.
Then the arquebusiers lit their gunpowder pans. It was Nicholas who shouted, ‘Crouch down!’ – the stakes pinning us at either end made it impossible to lie – and everyone fell to their knees. The arquebuses fired, with a great crashing sound that nearly deafened me, and a volley of iron such as I could never have imagined crashed into the rebels behind us. I believe the mercenaries tried to avoid hitting us where they could, though I saw several men at the other end of the line judder and fall, most shot through the body, blood and intestines gushing forth. Some bullets hit the chains, breaking them, sparks flashing. Many of the rebel horsemen behind us were hit by the hail of bullets and crashed to the ground, their horses, too. I looked at Nicholas, and saw that he was, with great courage, kneeling and trying with all his strength to pull the stake beside him from the ground. ‘Help me!’ he shouted. Boleyn and I pushed forward, drawing the chain taut, and helped him pull. We felt the stake move in the sandy soil and then suddenly it was up and out.
‘The other end,’ I said breathlessly, but Nicholas pulled us down again as a fresh volley, from the second rank of the arquebusiers, hit the rebel lines behind us, mowing down another line of horsemen attempting to advance through the remains of their dead comrades.
‘I think the chain at the other end’s broken,’ Boleyn said breathlessly, and looking along the line I saw that where the prisoners hit by the arquebusiers lay dead, bullets had also broken the chain in several places, separating it from the other stake. Perhaps the arquebusiers had fired thus deliberately.
‘Go!’ Nicholas shouted, just as a fresh volley of arrows thudded into Warwick’s men, several hitting the landsknechts, who let out mighty cries as they fell.
I am certain we would all have died that morning had not Nicholas begun to scuttle, crouched on all fours, to the right, between the two armies, separated now only by the ditch and stakes. From the other end of the chain everyone except those who had been hit followed Nicholas in the same crouching scuttle, until at last – it seemed like hours – we were beyond the ranks of the armies and stumbling downhill. We crawled up a knoll and down the other side, staggering into one of the many exposed rabbit warrens dotting the heath, the rabbits having been dug out for food weeks ago. Then someone near the front caught his foot in a rabbit hole and crashed to the ground, bringing everyone else down with him. Under the weight of all the men, the hollowed-out earth gave way beneath us, as it had the time gunpowder had been used on the warren on Mousehold, and we all found ourselves lying in a shallow earthen depression. Only just behind and above, we could hear the unbelievable din of battle, yells and crashes and gunfire that almost deafened us. We pressed ourselves into the ground, waiting for some of Kett’s men to follow and kill us, but after a few minutes I realized we had been forgotten.
Panting, I looked around me. Ahead, the ground sloped down to the city walls, closer than I would have thought, with the gates broken by cannon fire in the days before. Some of Warwick’s men stood on top of the walls. They could easily have shot us down, but must have known who we were. For the moment at least, we were safe.
‘Thank you,’ I said to Nicholas. ‘You saved us.’
‘So much for your rebel friends,’ Boleyn said angrily. ‘They betrayed you in the end.’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘That was Michael Vowell.’ I sighed. ‘These men are fighting because they can no longer believe in promises. Who can blame them?’
‘I can,’ said one man beside me. ‘Beasts, dogs, serfs and traitors, death to all of them!’
Dale laughed again – the sound was a little more high-pitched and shaky this time. He said, ‘Do you know what you look like, lying there with earth on your faces, arguing away?’ His laugh changed to a bloody splutter as a volley of half a dozen arrows came whistling from the sky, and one hit him in the heart, killing him instantly. Another pinioned a man to the ground by an arm. He lay screaming helplessly as blood welled out over the ground.
‘We have to get back to the city,’ Nicholas gasped. ‘If only we could get this damned chain off!’ He had become the natural leader, and many gentlemen at once turned on their backs, trying frantically to push the chain through the hasps of their padlocks, but in most cases the chain links were too wide. Soon men’s wrists were covered in blood as they frantically pushed and pulled. Nicholas, though, managed to pass the chain through his padlock, and I also got mine through, though Boleyn, next to us, could not.
‘We should try to run for the city wall,’ I shouted.
‘No,’ Nicholas answered. ‘The knoll above us and this low pit give some cover, but if we run, we’ll be visible to the rebel side and the next volley of arrows will be heavier.’
‘What’s happening out there?’ someone shouted in panic.
Finding new courage, I crawled slowly from the shallow pit and up the knoll. I held out a hand to the man who had taken the dead soldier’s helmet, who was once again lying flat on the ground, in the hope he might give it to me, but he only looked at me defiantly.
Glancing over the top of the knoll, glad my white hair and my face were covered with earth, I saw the most terrible sight I have ever witnessed. Warwick’s men had breached both the ditch and stakes, though several bodies were impaled there, and on the battlefield thousands were engaged in close-quarter fighting, moving so fast it was hard to follow with the eye. I was almost deafened by the screaming and shouting, the firing of guns, the clash of weapons and the wild neighing of horses. The landsknechts were now charging the rebel forces with their long pikes in close formation, and the rebel soldiers, unable to reach them with their swords or halberds, were being run through in their dozens. Volleys of arrows, however, still arced through the air from the rebel side, and cannon pounded volleys from the gun platform, aiming at Warwick’s artillery; I saw one soldier explode into pieces as a cannonball hit. On other parts of the battlefield men on both sides, in smaller groups, were slashing and stabbing at each other with swords and pole weapons – I saw a rebel soldier cut the head clean off one of Warwick’s men with a scythe on the end of a pole, before he was run through with a sword. Groups of three or four soldiers from each side were engaged in individual combat at the centre of it all, swords against halberds and spears, cutting and slashing, the lack of armour on the rebel side a disadvantage in such hand-to-hand fighting. I realized that many of those fighting now stood on the bodies of dead soldiers and horses. Blood oozed across the ground everywhere, I could smell its sharp salty tang from where I lay, mixed with the smell of shit as men’s bowels were torn out. I crawled slowly back down.
‘Who’s winning?’ one of the gentlemen asked.
‘No one,’ I answered grimly.
*
WE LAY THERE for hours as the battle swirled and crashed above us. The sun rose high and soon we were parched with thirst, though that would be nothing to what the men on the battlefield would be suffering. Once a rebel soldier staggered over the top of the knoll, scrabbling frantically at his face; his lower jaw had been shot away. He tripped on a rabbit hole, rolled down the little hill and lay on his stomach, making horrible gurgling noises which slowly ceased. Soon after, a thin stream of red began to trickle over the knoll at its lowest point. People looked at it in puzzlement before realizing it was blood from the battlefield.
From the sounds above I sensed the battle was moving, first away from us as Warwick’s army advanced, then back towards us as the rebels counter-attacked. At length the sound of battle seemed to move away decisively, uphill. The man who had taken the dead soldier’s helmet was lying in a sort of stupor. I crawled over and lifted the helmet from his head, ignoring his angry cry. I put it on and, brushing earth over my hair and face, began crawling to the top of the knoll once more.
‘Let me go,’ Nicholas said.
‘No, I must see what is happening.’ Again, I crawled to the top and looked over.
The battle had indeed moved away from where we lay, halfway up to the baggage train where the archers had taken position – I saw several lying dead behind the overturned carts, though the majority were still firing. Below, the close-quarter fighting continued, captains shouting at their men to keep formation. Between the fighting and where I lay I saw a huge pile of dead horses and men, many in pieces like slabs of meat. A group of several hundred men was being gathered together by one of Warwick’s officers, Captain Drury, I think, including landsknechts with arquebuses and pikes, while elsewhere on the field a few men staggered around among the bodies, wounded or shocked out of their wits. A group of rebels had surrounded a smaller group of Warwick’s foot soldiers, who fought them desperately, standing back to back. I crawled down again.
‘The rebels are retreating, but still fighting,’ I said to Nicholas and Boleyn, who was still chained to the other men.
‘You sound sorry,’ Boleyn said.
‘I am,’ I replied quietly. ‘Even now.’
Then every man in the earthen pit jumped and looked up as a voice shouted down at us from the top of the knoll. Looking up, I saw to my horror that Gerald and Barnabas Boleyn were standing there, shoulder to shoulder, in helmets and breastplates, carrying swords, filthy and covered in blood. They smiled, their faces happy as though after a day’s hunting. They were disobeying orders by leaving their company to find us – but when had orders ever mattered to the Boleyn twins?
‘Well, Gerry,’ Barnabas said, his scarred face opening into a wide grin. ‘You were right. It was them at the end of the chain.’
Gerald looked at us wolfishly. ‘I recognized the bent shape of the hunchback when we got near the front of the line. And there they are next to him, our dear father and the long stringy lad. Where’s the one-handed freak?’
John Boleyn answered angrily, ‘Down in Norwich, dead, for all we know.’
‘Fighting for the fucking rebels, no doubt.’
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘We’re all gentlemen here,’ one of the chained men said piteously. ‘Please, free us somehow, help us back to Norwich.’
Gerald gave him a careless glance. ‘We’ve a battle to get back to, my brother and I. But now the fighting’s moved away, we thought we’d come and see where you rats had taken cover.’ He looked at his brother. ‘Now’s the chance to kill them, our father that murdered our mother and his damned lawyers.’ He looked threateningly at the chained men. ‘None of you will say anything, will you? We’re just killing a murderer and a pair of rebel sympathizers.’
‘You wouldn’t want to incur the anger of Sir Richard Southwell,’ Barnabas added. Many of the gentlemen shook their heads, causing the chain to rattle, which made the twins laugh.
The two began descending the knoll, pulling their swords from their scabbards. We had survived the battle by a miracle, only for it to end at the hands of this wretched pair.
‘Start with our father,’ Gerald ordered, in charge as usual. He covered Nicholas and me with his sword while his brother moved towards Boleyn.
‘I didn’t kill your mother!’ Boleyn shouted frantically. ‘We know who it was now.’
Gerald had raised his sword for the killing blow, but hesitated at his father’s words, frowning. That moment killed him for, as he stood, an arrow, aimed from the Norwich walls, hit him in the middle of the forehead. He dropped like a felled log, the sword falling from his hand.
Barnabas stared at him, wide-eyed, seemingly unable to believe what had just happened. Then he let out a yell of misery and despair. He took a step towards his brother’s body, then turned towards the Norwich walls. The soldiers there had seen two men come down and make to attack the chained prisoners; thinking they were rebels, they had shot Gerald. Standing there with raised sword, he had made a clear target. With a scream, Barnabas threw himself on Gerald’s body; there was a clang as his breastplate hit his brother’s. He held Gerald’s face between his hands, not weeping, but letting out cries and gasps of despair. I looked at Gerald’s face – the arrow stuck grotesquely from his forehead: there was almost no blood.
Nicholas lunged forward and picked up Gerald’s sword. As he stepped back another arrow from the Norwich walls thudded into the ground beside Barna
bas, who stood up, stared round wildly, then, with a last look of devastated horror at his brother’s body, clambered up the side of the knoll and disappeared onto the battlefield.
Boleyn, lying on the ground, reached out a hand towards his dead son, but stayed it. Then his head sank onto his breast.
‘Who were they?’ one of the gentlemen asked. None of us answered.
‘Rebels, of course,’ another said impatiently. ‘At least now we know we’re safely covered from the Norwich walls.’
‘Unless the battle swings this way again,’ said a third.
But it never did. As we lay there, and the sun passed its zenith and afternoon came, the sounds of battle grew more distant. Thousands of flies had been drawn to the scene and settled on the bodies of Gerald, the dead soldiers, and the horse. At length I again dared, this time accompanied by Nicholas, to climb the knoll and look over. The scene beyond was, in its way, more terrible than ever. The rebel lines had all been broken, and men were fleeing wildly from the battlefield, past the now silent gun platform, towards the wide spaces of the heath. They were being pursued by landsknechts and horsemen from Warwick’s army, who cut them down mercilessly with their swords. Hundreds were killed as they fled; the battle was turning into a massacre. Only at one place, the baggage train the archers had used for shelter and where the carts had now been drawn into a semicircle to give more cover, a large body of rebels still fought on, shooting arrows and cutting down those of Warwick’s men who tried to climb over the carts.